Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1887-07-15
10 morCY MpOn YOur SOUL

man ride full speed to the empty house on the
| hillside, where the Englishman with the red
beard used TO live, one hour this side of Wax
kerstloom, and bring back with him the
clergyman he will find waiting there that
the prisoner may he offered his mnistrations
Also let two men be set to dig the prisoners
grave i'll the burial place at the back of the
house"
The guards laid their hands upon the old
mans shoulders, and he turned and went with
them without word. Bessie watched him
CO. through her crack in the wall, till the
dear old head with its fringe of white hairs
and the bent frame were no longer visible,
and then, at last, her faculties, benumbed and
exhausted by the horrors she was passing
| through, gave out, and she fell forward in a
faint there upon the sacks
Meanwhile Muller was writing the death
warrant on sheet of his pocket book. AT the
| foot he left n space for his own sigma
ture, but he did not sign it for reasons Of
his own. What he did do was to pass it
round to he countersigned by all who had
formed the court in this mock trial, his OBJ
iect being to implicate every man there pres
ent in the judicial murder by the direct and
incontrovertibe evidence of his sign manual
Now, Beers are simple pastoral folk, but they
are not quite SO simple as not to see through a
| move like this and thereon followed a very
instructive little scene. They had, to man,
| been willing enough to give their YER
dict for the old mans execution, but
they were by no means ready to record it in
| black and white. As soon as ever they I'M
| derstood the object of their feared and re-
| spected commandant general desire mani
| tested itself to make themselves respectively
| and collectively scarce. Suddenly they found
| that they had business outside, and something
like general attempt at bolt ensued. Sew
eral of them had already tumbled off their
extemDorized jury box, and, headed by the
redoubtable Hans, were approaching the en-
trance to the wagon house, when Frank Null
Ter perceived their design and roared out in O
voice of thunder:
stop! Not man leaves this place till the
warrant is signed
Instantly the men halted and began to look
| innocent and converse
Hans Coetzee, come here and sign" said
Muller again, whereupon that unfortunate
advanced with as good a grace as he could
muster, murmuring to himself curses, not
loud but deep, upsn the head of that devil
of man. Frank Muller"
However, there was no help for it, so, with
sickly smile, he put his name to the fatal
|
called another man, who instantly tried to get
out of it on the ground that his education had
been neglected and that he could not write,
an excuse that awaited him little, for Frank
Muller quietly wrote his name for him, leav-
ing space for his mark After that there
was no more trouble, and in five minutes the
entire back of the warrant was covered with
the scrawling signatures of the various meni-
| bers of the court
! One by one the men went, till at last Null
Ter was left alone, seated there OH the saw
bench, his head sunk upon his breast, holding
J the warrant i'll one hand, while with the other
/ he stroked his golden beard. Presently he
stopped stroliing his beard and sat for some
minutes perfectly still, so still that he
might have been carved i'll stone. By this
time the afternoon sun had got behind the
hill and the deep wagon house was full OF
shadow that seemed to gather round
him and invest him with somber,
mysterious grandeur. He looked like king
of evil, for evil has her princes as well as
good, and stamps them with her imperial seal
of power and crowns them with dadem of
her own; among these Frank Muller was
surely great A little smile of triumph played
upon his beautiful, cruel face, a little light
danced within his cold eyes and ran down the
yellow beard. At that moment he might
have sat for portrait of his master, the
devil.
Presently he awoke from his revere. II
have herr" he said to himself; II have her in
a visel She cannot escape me; she cannot
let the old man diel Those ours have served
my purpose well; they are as easy to play on
as fiddle, and | am a good player. Yes,
and now we are getting to the end of the
tune"